Repair or salvage? Digital piano action

[SamuelBLupowitz]

Is the action on this digital piano reparable, and is it worth fixing? If not... what do you do with a DOA hunk of plastic, metal, and electronics?

 

[video:youtube]

 

Context: my parents just came to visit, to celebrate my wife's 30th birthday and to see our house for the first time. Because of the pandemic and such, it's the first time we've seen them since the holidays, so we were thrilled to get together. That's why they could deliver us a bunch of junk from my childhood, and my wife didn't react by murdering them both with a hatchet.

 

One of the items they dropped off was my very first gigging keyboard, the mighty Suzuki SS-100 stage piano. Yes, I know, many of you are already seething with jealousy that you couldn't start your performing careers with this legendary beast atop your X-stand. Not only did the owner of the local music store sell it to a 13-year-old in 2002 by showing off its extremely passable "Jump" patch sample, but with its many sounds at my disposal and its chunky plastic weighted hammer action at my fingertips, I could perform both the air raid siren from "Miami 2017" and the helicopter from "Goodnight Saigon."

 

So suffice to say, I don't have much emotional or financial investment in getting this thing working again, which is why I felt comfortable taking it apart and seeing what was going on when it became clear that a good 79 of the 88 keys did not spring back up after being played. As you can see in the video above, it looks like the springs are shot? If that means I have to go in there and replace every single one, the hell with it, and I doubt very much it's worth paying someone to do it, too. But my hope was I could donate it to a school or community center, and if the keys don't work that's off the table. What do I do with it if it's junk? Does it go in the garbage? Can any of this be salvaged for anything? I've never had to dump something like this before.

 

And yes, I have very little personal experience in repair and electronics, beyond nagging forgetful local techs and one time shorting out my Wurlitzer while "fixing" it, so I'm hoping some folks here can at least chime in on whether diving deeper will be worth my time, or if I should back out and dispose of the remains somehow.

 

EDIT: I did find a somewhat popular thread elsewhere about this very same problem, and apparently it's not actually that difficult to fix... but the Extremely Helpful Video that everyone talks about is no longer on YouTube. Does look like someone figured out how to fix the same (?) problem though... [video:youtube]

[Joe Muscara]

If you can't get it to work would it look good hanging on the wall? It might be a cool art project. I have an old Casio that a friend had that was given to me when he passed away, and I've been meaning to do something like that.